Good morning... I have been with people as they have taken their last breath. Sacred. Surreal. The eternal spirit leaves the still body. Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over. Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends. The body is put back in the same ground it came from. The spirit returns to God, who [...]
Good morning... Leading a yoga class on the beach, the instructor said an interesting phrase, "Surrender. Do nothing but allow..." I have never really considered the practical definition of surrender. When I look it up now, I discover these addition phrases. Stop resisting an enemy. Submit to the authority of an opponent. Give into the powerful influence of another. [...]
Good morning... As my husband was brushing his teeth yesterday morning, I walked into the bathroom and said, "Happy Ash Wednesday!" "I'm not sure those words really go together," he said. "Happy." "And Ash Wednesday." So I deepened my voice and dragged down my candescence, "Dreary and dreaded Ash Wednesday to you." Later in the day, as our [...]
Good morning... This Ash Wednesday, we carry over some meaningful morsels of truth expressed beautifully in yesterday's post. "For Jesus, knowing God fully as he was fully known by God, Oneness with God was more than enough. For grace is clearly at work when a person accepts undeserved pain and suffering and does so because he (or she) is [...]
Good morning... "The key passage that I think we have to come to terms with is 1 Peter 2:23," says Pastor John in yesterday's powerful posted podcast. "When [Jesus] was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. And so my question for myself and for my [...]
Good morning... When my husband was in college, he took a trip to Israel with a small group of students and his favorite professor. Something important awakened in Steve as he walked the steps of Jesus, read Bible stories in the places they actually occurred, and collaborated on the questions of faith brewing in his heart. Walking and [...]
Good morning... "I'm glad God is not fair," said the middle aged man who battled through life-shattering addiction to become a husband at age forty-two and a father at forty-four then again at forty-six. His story reminds me of the quote that ends Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. "Just remember: no one can keep you from the second [...]
Good morning... She sat with me peacefully honest, straddling the first half of life and the second, shedding her false self to free her true, mothering a teenage son, no longer a boy, not quite at man. When she pulled out her phone and slowly read aloud to me this poem, my heart resonated with each word. What [...]
Good morning... "Good vines require cutting and more cutting," says Sr. Judith Sutera, a Benedictine nun and vinedresser. "A mile of runners won't give you one more grape, so get rid of the branches that do not bear fruit. Do you want to keep everything? Then expect nothing. Cut. And then cut some more." By nature, I am [...]
Good morning... How do we grow up into our Christlike true self? We follow in the faithful footprints left by Jesus as he walked his short lifetime on this dusty earth. We listen to Jesus' constant encouragement: “Ask and keep on asking and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking and you will find; knock [...]
